Adventures and Misadventures of a Science Fiction Writer

hiking staff

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Back in March, I constructed a titanium hiking staff. Click here to see the original post. Basically, it’s a five foot length of 1″ titanium tubing from Online Metals, filled with survival equipment and first aid supplies and capped at the ends. I’ve put a lot of miles on it since then and I recently stripped it down to make some minor improvements.

On the end that hits the ground, it had a simple rubber cane tip from the drug store. Those wear out occasionally, and the last time that happened, I was a long way from the car. By the time I made it back, I had packed quite a lot of dirt into the end of the tube and soiled the triangle bandages. It was time for some maintenance.

Adobe & Chocolate paints

Repaint: the original paint job was too dark. I had used a red oxide primer and chocolate acrylic for the graining. The faux wood grain looked vaguely like teak, but only in bright sunlight. Indoors, it just looked brown. I went looking for a lighter base coat and settled on this adobe colour. Only the primer changed; the chocolate acrylic used for the grain is the same, and so is the clear coat.

Repack: no need to change the contents, except to replace the soiled bandages with clean ones. Some later additions like the emergency whistle had been kind of jammed in, so I took the opportunity to stow them properly.

Regrip: when I originally frapped the grip area, the only cord I could find was a rather random mix of colours, and rated for just 200 pounds. I had always wanted to use paracord, so I ordered some three millimeter cord from Canada Paracord, rated at 425 pounds. A multicolored pattern shows the grime less, so I went with a camouflage pattern called Canadian Digital.

Recap: The first time around, I capped the ends with a 1″ rubber cane tip on the bottom and I made a wooden knob for the top that screws on to a broom handle thread, so it could be swapped out. Now I turned the whole staff over, so the threaded end and the metal band are on the bottom. The end has a smooth face to reduce wear on the rubber, and I backed up the tip’s thin steel disc with a loonie. That end is watertight even if the rubber gets perforated. I wanted to carry a spare cane tip, so I put a second one on top, and that’s the one you pull off to access the contents, starting with the first aid stuff. The rubber foot is not as pretty as the wooden knob, but if you fall on it, it won’t go in your eye.

Before

After

Last time I did the faux wood finish with a nubbly rubber glove for a broad grain. This time I used a push-broom with stiff bristles and it turned out better, with a finer grain. It’ll pass for hardwood at first and second glance.

What’s inside?

Latex gloves, triangle bandages and safety pins.

First aid booklet, band-aids and aspirin.

Fire starter sticks, tinder, flint and steel.

A tiny compass. (Titanium is non-magnetic, so a compass is not affected.)

Duct tape and an emergency whistle.

Fishing line, hooks and sinkers. Staff can be a crude pole.

Water purification tablets. (The empty staff will hold 650mls of water)

A space blanket, orange on one side.

With all that inside, and about fifty feet of paracord wrapped around it, it weighs 1.1 kilos, or 2lbs, 8oz. Most people are surprised at how light it feels. Titanium is cool that way.

Update from August 1, 2017. During repacking, I discovered that the latex gloves had compressed into a tight rubber ball that was jammed in so tightly I had to dig them out with a wire hook. In their place, I found room for a small amount of first-aid adhesive tape, and a little pocket knife with a locking blade.

I like to hike in the woods. A stick comes in handy on steep sections of trail, and it gives my arms something to do.

At first, I improvised a hiking staff from a five-foot rake handle. I frapped a section with string for a grip, and shoved on a rubber cane tip from the drugstore.

But I wondered- if I had a light metal tube, could I pack it with survival gear and first aid supplies? Aluminum would work, but what I really wanted was titanium. The price was a deterrent, but I finally ordered a five foot length of one inch welded titanium tubing from Online Metals.

While I was waiting for it to come, I started picking up things to put inside: a space blanket, fire starters, a small compass, a tiny roll of duct tape, water purification tablets, a whistle, fishing line and hooks, a first-aid booklet, triangle bandages, surgical gloves, chewable aspirin. Total weight, about 250 grams, or just over eight ounces.

Step One: Paint. The titanium tube arrived with the specs stenciled all over it. I’m not sure other hikers want to meet a large man with a metal pipe in his hands, so I primed it with red oxide and applied a faux wood-grain in chocolate acrylic glaze. I used a nubbly rubber glove for the graining, and the overall effect is a dark brown grain like teak. I applied a clear-coat to protect it.

Step Two: Ends. A one-inch rubber cane tip for the foot. These have steel discs inside, so the metal tube does not cut through them. For the head end, I wanted something versatile. I chose to fit the top with a broom-handle thread so that I can attach different tips. I used a lathe to turn down the handle of a SOG Spirit for this purpose, and epoxied it into the tube with the threaded portion sticking out. I found a wooden paint-roller handle that is threaded to take a broom-handle for painting ceilings. I cut it down and rounded it off to make a knob for everyday hiking. It has a decorative metal ring that looks nice on the staff.

Step Three: Frapping. The one-inch tubing is a little small for my grip, and slippery. Paracord would be best, but the closest I could get locally was some polypropylene braided cord with a 200 pound breaking strength. I wound about forty feet of it around the staff at elbow height in two layers. To do this, I mounted the tubing on a dowel spindle so that I could turn it easily. I started at the lower end, wound my way up for about ten inches, then tightly back down again. Then I tied the loose ends with a tight reef knot and fused the ends to the metal with a lighter. The knot is almost invisible. Unwound, the cord could be used in a myriad of ways, from building a shelter to suspending food from a tree.

Step Four: Packing.

Contents. I did get the space blanket more compactly rolled after several tries.

The space blanket was the biggest challenge. Although it was folded into a compact rectangle not much bigger than a deck of cards, rolling it into a slim cylinder was harder than I expected. The key was to refold it into a larger flat rectangle of the right length, squeeze all the air out, roll it tightly around a welding-rod spindle, and draw it tight with adhesive tape at regular intervals. The blanket came with an added bonus; it’s bright orange on one side and printed with diagrams showing how to use it for shelter and so on. It went in first, and slid right up to the head end. Next up, all those loose items. I rolled the first-aid booklet up tightly and taped it like the blanket. I packed some of the loose items into little ziploc bags, then I used heavy duty aluminum foil to make a pair of cylindrical torpedoes filled with the odds and ends, and slid them in. That prevents the contents from rattling or shifting and jamming. Plus the aluminum foil can be used to fashion a cup or a reflector. The last items in were the ones I thought I might need in the biggest hurry; the first-aid supplies. Repeated attempts to roll the triangle bandages into a neat cylinder were pathetic. Finally I just used a chopstick to stuff them in, tied together like a magician’s kerchiefs. The safety pins and the tiny scrap of paper with sling and bandage diagrams went in with them. When the staff was nearly packed full, I squeezed in the whistle and the surgical gloves, and left the tail end of the triangle bandage right at the end where I could grab it and pull it all out. Then the rubber cane tip went on.

Empty, the titanium staff is lighter than the wooden rake handle, and would likely float. Fully loaded, it is just over a kilo: 1070 grams (or 2lbs, 6oz). I find it a comfortable weight. You may have noticed that I carry water purification tablets, but not any kind of water container. Emptied of it’s other contents, the titanium staff will hold 650mls of water, about right for one tablet.

A few months after I wrote this post, I reconditioned, repainted, and repacked the staff. You can see an update here.

We’ve been slacking off. We’ve become a little too familiar with several different routes to the west coast of the USA, so we haven’t made a trip lately. We think we might try something radically different this fall. A trip to the east coast of the USA. From our home in Kenora, there is a significant obstacle; the Great Lakes. At the languorous pace at which I like to drive – something like four to six hours a day – it takes most of a week just to get to Toronto.

However, I am interested in attending Can-Con this fall. That’s a big science fiction convention in Ottawa. For more about that aspect of the trip, you might want to keep an eye on Timothy Gwyn Writes. I keep separate blogs, so my foodie friends don’t have to read about my writer’s angst, and my writing friends don’t have to wade through my wine-snobbery. Anyway, if we fly to Ottawa, a whole range of possibilities open up. Several ranges, actually: the Adirondacks, the White Mountains, and the Green Mountains, for starters. Regular readers will recall that Caroline is on a mission to make me drive up one side and down the other of every mountain in North America.

Initial trip planning quickly revealed that an early October trip into those mountain areas might be well-timed for seeing some spectacular fall colours. Also, an American pilot friend who enjoys his stop-overs in Kenora spoke highly of Bar Harbor, Maine as one of his other favourite places to visit. So we are roughing out a route that would offer a string of four-hour drives through spectacular autumn scenery. So far, it looks like this:

If you click on the map, you will see a larger, more legible version.

Some points of interest include Acadia National Park, Maine; Lake Placid, New York; and Kingston, Ontario, where Caroline has family history to look into for her genealogy studies. Her Loyalist ancestors fled Vermont, and their home, appropriated by Patriots, became the Governor’s mansion, so we might go looking for that. She tells me that Vermont’s State Seal still bears a depiction of the view from one of the mansion’s windows. Somewhere in there we should be able to find a maritime museum (Bath, Maine looks promising), and while we won’t be in New York’s most famous wine area, the Finger Lakes, we might find a few wines to taste, too.

We would be renting a car, or more probably an SUV, in Ottawa, so our trusty CRV won’t be making the trip. Dingbat, our less trusty Garmin GPS, will be coming along for the ride if I have my way, because I can pre-program him with stuff before we go. Besides, even if the rental comes with a GPS, it might be small, or it might be another brand. I get along okay with Tom-Toms, but I am not as adept with all their features.

Other goals: some hiking – I like a morning walk every day. Trees are good company. My hiking staff (staves actually, I have two) would be oversize baggage, but if I take my hockey tape and a rubber cane tip, I can pick up a rake handle at any hardware store. This would allow for a quick and dirty copy of my light staff. No, despite the name, it does not resemble a light sabre. My heavy staff is six feet (and five pounds) of steel pipe that starts to give my arms a work-out after the first hour. It’s nice to have when you hike where wolves and bears are common (and I do, regularly) but it takes up a lot of room in a car. Also, I can picture what would happen if I leaned something like that on the wall of a bed-and-breakfast room full of antique china knick-knacks.